Embodying Glamour During the Golden-age of Hollywood: A Critical Analysis of Beauty Practice Marketing, 1920-1938

Beauty has always been a marketable and lucrative entity and the focus of discussion across many disciplines such as fashion studies, film studies, marketing, and cultural studies. This major research project examines the dynamic relationship between the Hollywood film industry, the cosmetic industry, star/spectator theory, and concepts surrounding advertising and consumption during the Golden age of Hollywood with specific emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s. Fashion studies enabled me to centre the body, highlighting notions of embodiment in beauty practice marketing through a critical literature review and a visual analysis of Max Factor advertisements in Photoplay magazine between the years 1930-1938. I examine how fan magazines were an ideal medium to house cosmetic advertisements which in tandem contributed to the dissemination and embodiment of beauty practices; five thematic tropes were identified across the ‘Society Makeup’ advertisements analyzed which work, alongside the identified relationships, to communicate embodiment glamour.